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By Julie Sevrens, Lyons Mercury News

 CALIFORNIA, USA, 24 February 2002 -- Old computer parts hauled into California's recycling centers are more likely to wind up as toxic trash in Asia's waterways than as reused high-tech materials on store shelves, according to a report to be released today.

While many consumers are led to believe their outdated equipment will be given a new life after turning it in for recycling, most often it winds up on a boat bound for China, India or Pakistan, where is it burned in rice fields or dumped into irrigation canals.

The electronic trash, known as e-waste, is left to leach poisonous materials such as lead, mercury and cadmium into water supplies and the atmosphere. Investigators researching the report found waterways and rural fields littered with broken glass, circuit boards and plastic parts.

``It's kind of the underbelly of the high-tech revolution, and it really isn't very pretty,'' said Ted Smith, executive director of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, one of five environmental groups that worked together on the report.

Indeed, an estimated 50 to 80 percent of all electronics parts ``recycled'' in the western United States are ultimately transported to Asia, according to the report. There, they are not recycled but dumped into open fields, riverbanks, ponds, wetlands and irrigation ditches, according to ``Exporting Harm: The Techno-Trashing of Asia.''

``What we found was really a cyber-age nightmare,'' said Jim Puckett, coordinator of the Seattle-based Basel Action Network, one of the environmental groups that worked on the report and toured China in December. ``It's toxic waste and in massive amounts. This is stuff from me or you.''

The graveyards where many old personal computers have gone to die can be found in villages such as Guiyu, China. Villagers there make barely enough money to survive by burning electronics wires to recover the scant traces of copper found inside. Workers, many of them children, fish toner out of printer cartridges or swish circuit boards in acid baths in an attempt to remove any precious metals or materials from the otherwise worthless cargo.

Smoke from the crude recycling methods dusts the local huts and water holes with a thick layer of toxic ash, the investigators found. Shards of glass from broken computer monitors litter irrigation canals. And blackened circuit boards line entire riverbanks.

``It is off the scale, the pollution that they found,'' said Smith. ``There's no thought and no pretense of any environmental or occupational health standards.''

Computer waste is filtered to such areas from not only the United States but from other industrialized nations such as England, Japan, Australia and Singapore.

The villagers are not given gloves or other protective gear to wear, nor are they aware some of the parts they handle may be carcinogenic, report authors state.

The flow of e-waste from North America to poor Asian countries has been a dirty little secret for years, one that most consumers and even many computer makers don't know about, said Renee St. Denis, product-recycling solutions manager for Hewlett-Packard. The industry giant launched its own recycling program seven years ago after learning that even the most reputable recycling businesses ultimately end up selling computer parts to other firms that do ship waste to Asia.

``It's a complicated, convoluted path the stuff follows to get to China,'' St. Denis said. ``It isn't necessarily the first person who handles it who ships it there.''

Firms that handle most U.S. computer recycling could not be reached for comment Sunday. But apparently it costs more to transform old electronics parts into new products than recycling firms can make off them.

Proper disposal of a standard computer in the United States costs between $5 and $10, said Steve Skurnac, president of Micro Metallics Corp. in San Jose. Skurnac's company is one of the few to break down electronics parts under federal environmental regulations rather than shipping them to Asia, where such laws are lax or non-existent.

``It's clearly not a universal standard for handling this kind of waste stream,'' Skurnac said. ``That's what's discouraging. There is a lot of material people or companies think is being recycled but obviously isn't.''

IF YOU'RE INTERESTED The full report can be found online at www.ban.org . Hewlett-Packard will pick up your unwanted computer equipment -- whether it's made by HP or not -- and recycle it in the United States for a nominal fee. Functioning computers are donated to charities, while others are refurbished and resold. Those that can't be salvaged are recycled properly without adding to landfills. For details, go to www.hp.com/go/recycle. Contact Julie Sevrens Lyons at jlyons@sjmercury.com or (408) 920-5989.